TOKYO, July 19 (Reuters) - Japan needs to rapidly expand computing power as it vies to become a global leader in artificial intelligence, said Hideki Murai, a special AI adviser to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
"The government's key priority is computing power.
We feel a real sense of crisis about that," Murai, a ruling Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker who heads the government's AI strategy team, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has been slow to invest in the field, and lags the United States in AI computer infrastructure.
Some 3,000 companies in Japan have access to a supercomputer at the government's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) offering 0.8 exaflops of computing power.
Persons:
Hideki Murai, Fumio Kishida, OpenAI, Murai, Shohei Ohtani, Tim Kelly, Sam Nussey, Miho Uranaka, Sam Holmes
Organizations:
Liberal Democratic, Reuters, government's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science, Technology, Microsoft, Japan's Ministry of Economy Trade, Industry, SoftBank Corp, AIs, Japan, Major League, European Union, Thomson
Locations:
TOKYO, Japan, United States, AIST, European